Archive for the 'Kiss' Tag Under 'Soundcheck' Category

September 26th, 2010, 2:16 pm by BEN WENER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Despite Saturday's egg-frying, brain-melting temperatures -- triple-digit heat that bounced off the pavement and blasted you in the face, and probably deterred some potential last-minute ticket-buyers -- there were still plenty of reasons (one highly compelling one above all) to have trekked out to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana for the first half of Epicenter Twenty Ten.

Yet the launch of the annual California Jam-inspired Inland Empire festival, which for its second go-round has been expanded to two days of rock, rap and punk and relocated from the grassier Pomona Fairplex, ultimately became a clear-cut case of polarizing then-vs.-now contrasts: on the one hand, just about the best hip-hop performance I've ever seen; on the other other, the worst rock show I've suffered through in years.

Eminem, leaner and meaner since returning from his five-year, rehab-induced absence, delivered an utterly tremendous performance just after sundown, powerfully proving himself all over again with the same voracious energy he had in abundance during his auspicious start in the late '90s but then rapidly lost in a haze of scattershot hostility and pools of self-doubt and celebrity excess.

Smartly conceived, stuffed with crowd-pleasing cuts and executed with riveting, powder-keg intensity, his 75-minute set was a fierce, stunning comeback that reaffirmed his greatness -- the virtuosity of his ridiculously skilled verbal flow, the dynamic highs and lows and perpetual twists of his rhymes and storytelling (when just before his self-imposed hiatus it had become nothing but monotone) and above all his ability to galvanize audiences without losing control of the set itself.

I suspect even hard-to-impress hip-hop heads would agree it ranks among the finest moments any rap star has ever produced. And as the blueprint for what I hope will be a larger touring production behind the biggest-selling album of the year -- Recovery, already at 2.5 million and counting in the U.S. alone since June and a clear Grammy front-runner -- it sets the stage for a harder-hitting takeover to best Jay-Z's recent Uptown soul dazzlers.

When the new rock festival Epicenterpremiered last year, with a stellar lineup that included Tool, Linkin Park, Alice in Chains, Wolfmother and Atreyu, co-creator Gary Spivack -- the man who, along with his company Right Arm Entertainment, is also responsible for Ohio's popular Rock on the Range bash -- wasn't sure if the one-off shindig could become an annual event.

Leading up to that event in Pomona, modeled after the massive California Jam bashes of the '70s, Spivack would only hint that Epicenter's future hinged on how it fared in its debut. “Let's just say that if everyone shows up Saturday, that will help the decision,” he told me in our interview last year.

When about 35,000 people turned out, it instantly became clear that there would indeed be a second Epicenter. And though rumors of expansion, relocation and oddly matched headliners making exclusive appearances started swirling months before an official announcement -- accompanied by fake fliers, much like what happens with Coachella every spring -- most of the random postings about what's now billed as Epicenter Twenty Ten, Saturday and Sunday at the Auto Club Raceway in Fontana, turned out to be true.

Saturday's roster pairs the pyrotechnic blasts of Kiss (the only California show from the masked men all year) and the first major performance from Gavin Rossdale and the reunited British grunge rockers of Bush with some of the biggest names in hip-hop, including newly sober and still chart-topping Eminem (in his sole West Coast appearance this year) and OutKast's Big Boi. Also on tap: Papa Roach, House of Pain, Crash Kings, Big B with Scott Russo, the Knux, Smile Empty Soul, Deuce, Kinda Major and the Envy.

September 21st, 2010, 12:58 am by KELLI SKYE FADROSKI, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Last year, when Jim Lindberg left Pennywise -- the band he fronted for more than two decades -- rumors zipped through cyberspace via punk websites that the aggressively outspoken singer was leaving the scene for good.

But Lindberg wasn't ready to throw in the towel at all. He says music was still coursing through his veins, which is why just weeks after parting ways with Pennywise -- amicably, he insists -- he headed back into the studio with bassist Davey Latter (of Everest) and drummer Alan Vega (of Good Guys in Black) and began toying around with songs he'd stashed away over the years.

“I had a lot of songs that I wanted to play that just didn't fit Pennywise,” Lindberg says during a recent phone chat. “I wanted to try new things, and there's a new energy to this group and it's fun to kind of start all over. But still, it's a daunting task to start from the ground up.”

Lindberg says that both the band name and the imagery adorning the packaging of the self-titled debut that arrives last week pays homage to the South Bay of Los Angeles, where Lindberg grew up in and around Hermosa Beach. “It's a surf town but there's also this huge industrial complex as well, so it's kind of like the dark side of paradise. The Pacific Ocean has always represented something very peaceful for me, but every day I'd surf in front of a huge refinery. It's an interesting place to grow up, but I'd never leave.”

Last year, by the time Linkin Park and Tool took the stage at the first Epicenter festival, it was clear to anyone who could recall 1974's California Jam (featuring the Eagles, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Earth, Wind & Fire) and its '78 sequel (featuring Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, Santana, Foreigner and Heart) that the brains behind this modern-day revamp intended to evoke the spirit of those storied Inland Empire events that drew hundreds of thousands of people to the Ontario Motor Speedway.

This year, organizers at Right Arm Entertainment are going one better.

June 18th, 2010, 2:30 pm by KELLI SKYE FADROSKI, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

KISS, Eminem, Blink-182, Bush and Rise Against are among the artists rumored to be performing at the second annual Epicenter Festival in Pomona later this year.

Coachella message boards were flooded earlier today with postings of various Epicenter fliers supposedly leaked on the Internet yesterday. With an official announcement just a few days away – the website says a big announcement is coming Monday, and the event appears to be slated for Sept. 25 at the Fairplex in Pomona – fans' imaginations are running wild with the possibilities of lineups.

One user commented that they had heard Kanye West, Aerosmith and Lit will perform. Another posted that Rage Against the Machine and Metallica are slated to take the stage, and although scoop49er didn't agree with the choice, Limp Bizkit would round out that particular roster.

The inaugural Epicenter Festival, which took place last August, drew a crowd of 35,000 and presented a stellar lineup including Tool, Linkin Park, Alice in Chains and Wolfmother. Those commenting on message boards seem concerned that whatever this year's bill turns out to be, it's not going to be as solid as the roster promoters (who also put together the annual Rock on the Range Festival in Ohio) were able to pull off last year.

Leave it to the former Johnny Rotten to damn the fest before he even arrives. "I've not done that one," he admits. "But it's very corporate. Festivals aren't what I was brought up with. They're too structured, too organized, and it's really more about people sitting down in deck chairs."

"Oh, that's not what this is," I countered with a tone suggesting he should know better. This is a Goldenvoice production, after all -- and corporate or not, John Lydon and the L.A. concert promoter go way back, to the scrappy early gigs of his second, longer-lasting and (in my opinion) better band, Public Image Ltd. Surely there's some fond feelings there.

"Yes, well, I doubt that it's the mucky pop we used to call British festivals. It's not like sitting in the rain and the mud and the snow. It's just the organization and the structure of it. I'm always wary of that, of looking a bit too corporate.

"But listen, this is PiL -- we make it our own universe, whether we're playing to 200 people in (bleep-bleep) Iowa or 200,000 … which I have done from time to time, in certain European countries … it's all the same. It's a different approach, but you make it enjoyable, you're there to do the best you can, and share the joy.

Dude, are you kidding me? Did you really think I was seriously suggesting Avenged should replace the Rev with a 4-year-old boy? And "fundamentally wrong"? C'mon: it's simply meant as a fun post about a cute kid who, gee, happens to be bashing the bejesus out of an A7X song. If anything, it's a salute to them.

December 15th, 2009, 12:22 pm by BEN WENER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Really, Hall of Fame voters?

ABBA, that admittedly infectious but synthetic Swedish pop confection that nonetheless remains the very antithesis of rock 'n' roll, will get into your not-so-hallowed Hall ahead of Kiss, an equally internationally adored band that has been the masked face of primordial rock for decades?

November 25th, 2009, 11:32 am by BEN WENER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

I never thought I'd see the masked men of Kiss again after their supposed farewell tour of 2000 –- and I've been pretty much OK with that ever since.

After waiting the better part of two decades to fulfill my boyhood fantasy –- to feel my face melt from mammoth flames at a full-blown, honest-to-Beelzebub Kiss concert, where I could sing “Black Diamond” and “Strutter” and “Rock and Roll All Nite” at the top of my lungs –- I wound up seeing them three times in five years during their reunited late-'90s second heyday.

First: at the Forum in August '96, as grunge gave way to electronica, when we could still laugh at the irony of it all -- of that most awesomely silly of heavy rock bands selling out three nights at the Lakers' former home 20 years after their prime, reducing all the dour posing of '90s rock to rubble in the span of one fire-breathing, blood-spitting minute.

Next: Dodger Stadium, Halloween night '98, with the Smashing Pumpkins opening –- and the mass of fireworks and 3D gimmicks distracted me from noticing how little joy there was in watching these geezers again so soon, not to mention how lousy their Psycho Circus album was. By March 2000, when they played what was then the Pond for the first time, it already had become painful. The spark of renewed enthusiasm had gone out of Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. Ace Frehley looked 100,000 years old. And my mom could drum better than Peter Criss.

November 20th, 2009, 1:34 am by KELLI SKYE FADROSKI, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Kiss is a band that needs no introduction, as the face-painted, pyro-loving, blood-spitting rockers have been at it for more than three decades.

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of its February '74 self-titled debut, the ever-popular concert attraction, founded by frontmen Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, has been out on its worldwide KISS Alive/35 Tour, which stops Tuesday at Honda Center in Anaheim and Wednesday at Staples Center in L.A.

It's turning out to be a busy year in Kiss' history. For starters, the current tour coincides with the release of Sonic Boom, the band's well-received first studio effort in 11 years, following 1998's lackluster Psycho Circus, the first album to feature the original Kiss lineup since 1977's Love Gun and Alive II.

Meanwhile, after a decade of eligibility, the quartet has finally been nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Its competition for next year's five coveted spots are Swedish pop superstars ABBA, reggae legend Jimmy Cliff, punk and metal godfathers the Stooges, prog-rock forebear Genesis and two acts whose rise began in the '80s, Red Hot Chili Peppers and LL Cool J.